The past decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. This advance has been even further accelerated by the extensive consumer and business involvement in the Internet over the past several years. As a result of these changes, it seems as if virtually all aspects of human endeavor in the industrialized world require human-computer interfaces. These changes have made computer directed activities accessible to a substantial portion of the industrial world's population, which, up to a few years ago, was computer-illiterate, or, at best, computer indifferent.
In order for the vast computer supported industries and market places to continue to thrive it will be necessary for increasing numbers of workers and consumers who are limited in computer skills to become involved with computer interfaces.
Despite all of the great changes that have been made in the computer industry, the screen cursor controlled manually by the user still remains the primary human-computer interface. The user still commands the computer primarily through manual pointing devices such as mice, joy sticks and trackballs that control the on-screen cursor movements. It must be noted that the principles involved in such pointing devices were developed over a generation ago when most of the people involved in interfaces to computers were computer professionals who were willing to invest great amounts of time in developing computer skills. It is very possible that had computers originally been the mass consumer, business and industry implements that they are today, user interfaces which were much easier and required less skill to use would have been originally sought and developed. Nonetheless, the manually controlled cursor movement devices are our primary access for cursor control. The present invention is directed to making mice, trackballs and like cursor control devices more user friendly and effective.
Icons in Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are, of course, the primary access through which the user may interactively select substantially all computer functions and data. Thus, the number of icons that the user has to contend with in the navigation of his cursor to his target icon has been greatly increasing. These may be arranged in many layers of windows. In certain portions of the users' display screen, there may be dense populations of icons. The icons may overlap or be stacked one on the other.
In addition, the users' desktop display screens have been increasing in size to thereby provide the user with the luxury of some room for icon spacing to visually separate icons. On the other hand, users are extensively using laptop computers and palm-type devices, including Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and even cell phone displays to supplement their desktops. Thus, the desktop displays need to be replicated on these smaller screen devices to thereby make the icons even more closely spaced. In any event, whether it be on the desktop, laptop of smaller screen device, the selection of icons or like displayed objects and items from crowded screen areas presents a problem.